There is no

doubt that we are in prison for a crime we did not commit.  At this point COVID-19 has killed .03% of the world’s population. I do not know a soul who has died of it (oh, sorry — an old man that I meant once died of it six months ago). I can think of maybe one person I heard about who got sick but did not die. I am not in any way challenging the medical importance of lock-downs; we can all give up on that. It’s quite obvious that lock-downs are the way of the future, public health is now running our lives, period. But be that as it may, because we have done nothing wrong (we have only lived, or tried to live) and because the actual illness called COVID-19 has touched so few of our lives in any serious way, the lock-downs seem unjust. We are in prison for a vast but uncertain length of time — our sentence could and does change weekly, nay, daily. There is no mercy from the unmovable powers that be; there is no merciful parole board. No matter what our opinion on this lock-down, our present incarceration nevertheless feels unjust; like an unwarranted life sentence. It does matter if it is ‘for are own good’ — prison sentences often are often framed as so — or if it is deemed necessary due to the equally amorphous notion of  ‘the good of others’ — we perceive it as unjust, and that is the important thing. I have personal experience with the perversion of justice, as do many gay people. One of my mentors John Herbert told me (about 20 years ago) — about his own incarceration — when I interviewed him for — well, I can’t remember now. We met in a coffee shop on Church Street (now gone, called The Devon — being ‘condofied’ as we speak). We sipped our coffees coincidentally at the very restaurant he had frequented when he was arrested as a young man in the 1940s. Someone tried to rob him and his friend during a lovely cross-dressed stroll down Church street. Herbert reported it to the police, and subsequently. the robber accused him of having solicited him for sex. Herbert did not solicit the man; he was merely having a little fun dressed as a girl. At any rate Herbert was placed in the Guelph Reformatory. The result was that —- many many years later — he wrote a play Fortune and Men’s Eyes, one of the first ‘gay plays’ — famous for posing an eloquent argument against imprisonment as rehabilitation. Herbert argued that prison -- rather than teaching miscreants to lead a better life -- actually creates criminals. I had my own encounter with the police about 40 years after John's encounter. I was dressed in drag, riding in a cab on Queen street, only to be stopped by a police car and ticketed  for not wearing a seat belt. All that had changed over the years was the exact nature of the bogus charge — instead of robbery it was now traffic safety; but the sentiment was the same -- both Herbert and I were considered to be prostitutes —and as we were not females, we were doubly depraved. The policeman, as I remember, asked me what I was dressed up for, and I’m sure I told him I was going to a party, which must have confused and irritated him, and/or perhaps caused a subtle stirring in the groin. Both my indictment and John Herbert’s much more serious tragedy both resulted in creativity; as playwrights and loudmouths we subsequently set out to turn the love that dare not speak its name into the love that won’t shut up. Of course you will — if you are woke folk ( or woke influenced ) say “But you Sky, you are a very ancient gay man — and like all of them — privileged, rich, and probably on your way to vacation in Mexico (But when might that be, I ask you?) This is untrue. Not only am I not planning a vacation anywhere presently but homophobia has continued to affect gay lives and will continue to long after I am long dead. Up until a couple of years ago, you could easily be imprisoned in Canada for spreading HIV — which meant simply not telling your partner you had it —whether you were wearing a condom during intercourse, or not. Under this law a young hooker I know was arrested after having a fling on a farm with some farmer. He stayed with the farmer for a couple of weeks, rejected the farmer’s marriage proposal and then was accused by said farmer of infecting him with HIV. (The farmer was not confirmed to have HIV — he had not had the test — but that did not matter, he was still justified under the law in making such an accusation.) My friend was put in jail (my, how times have not changed!) and -- although he was an actual male hooker whereas John and I were only accused of being  that - nevertheless we were all treated as the same garbage under the law. My lovely whore friend got out of jail after not too long a stay, and John Herbert and I wrote plays galore about the egregious injustice of homophobia.  These are the positive outcomes. We are not, however, all ‘Birdmen of Alcatraz.’ I question whether or not the unjust imprisonment of the entire universe that we presently call lock-down will have quite the same redemptive outcome. First there are the countless tragic unnecessary deaths in poorer countries that  are a consequence of economies being halted completely and willy-nilly. Then there are are those in the United States — and elsewhere—  who will turn to violence and insurrection to protest the loss of their freedom to live and work. Then there is the very real possibility that populist dictators may gain  power if they choose to run on the platform of 'no more lock-downs' — which they will, for sure. I see this as a very real threat. I certainly — at this moment--  might be persuaded to vote for a homophobic or anti-choice candidate if he promised no more lock-downs (the candidate would undoubtedly be a bloated, fascistic, Mussolini-like 'he'). At the end of John Herbert's Fortune and Men’s Eyes, Smitty -- the leading character “looking cooly out to the audience [as though through them he was addressing society at large] with a slight, twisted smile that is somehow cold sadistic and menacing… speaks his last line. ‘I'll pay you all back!’” (These chilling, prophetic words resemble Malvolio’s curse in 12th Night: “I’ll be revenged on the whole pack of you.”) There are many tragic victims of an illness called  COVID-19. But there will be many more victims of this endless lock-down. I do not eagerly anticipate their revenge.